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Birds of Beauty: Two Swahili Folktales |
| Section: CULTURE / FOLK WISDOM |
| Author: Jan Knappert |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 10/1/1994 |
| Size: 2,125 Words, 11,587 Characters |
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Over a thousand years ago, the Swahili were already living on the east coast of Africa and its coastal islands. Islam had reached the people, who remain predominantly Muslim today. Their best-known towns included Barawa, Mombasa, Tanga, and Dar es Salaam. Sovereign and independent commercial empires, these towns formed constantly shifting alliances and had traded with up-country Bantu peoples as well as Arabs from Oman, Yemen, and the Gulf since the early Middle Ages. Swahili sailors were familiar with such ports as Suez, Basra, and Bombay; many features of Swahili culture are, in fact, adopted from abroad, including some oral and song traditions, folktales, and proverbs.
In the first story retold here, the original Swahili storyteller has skillfully interwoven a tale about an African folk character, the nunda or mungwa, with the Oriental motif of a wondrous fruit tree in the king's garden and a supernatural bird that steals its fruit.
A voracious, snakelike monster that devoured people the way cats eat mice, the nunda was well known in Bantu folklore. The hero who destroys it is usually a young lad who owns nothing, but, after h...
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...d: "You brought me here and you survived the fire. I admire you. Here is my father's ring; when you rub it, any wish you pronounce will come true." Ali rubbed the ring and said: "I want to be sultan."
So Ali married the demon princess and became the sultan. He and his bride ruled the country fairly, and every night they watched and listened to the dancing and singing of the bird girls.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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